Cultural Convergences in the Medieval Mediterranean
Saturday, September 11, 2004, 9:00 am—5:00 pm
University Museum of Art
In the medieval world the waters of the Mediterranean served as a crossroads for the flow of people, objects, and ideas between Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. For the members of medieval Mediterranean communities, art assumed a primary role in the negotiation of cultural identity. These convergences of cultures and interactions of artistic traditions have drawn together scholars from many disciplines today. The University of Michigan’s one-day symposium explores new and varied approaches to the phenomenon by emphasizing the visual dimensions of encounter and exchange. Bringing together an international group of art historians who deal with issues of medieval Mediterranean intercultural exchange, this symposium considers both the circulation of concrete art objects and also the related generation and dissemination of formal idioms and ideologies.
Symposium Program
9.00—9.30 Coffee
9.30—9.45 Welcome and Introduction
Morning Session: The Levant
9.45—10.35 Anne Derbes and Mark Sandona (Hood College), “Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man? Male/Female, East/West: Amazon Encounters in the Levant.”
10.35—11.25 Michele Bacci (University of Siena), ““Western Patterns of Church Decoration and Furnishing in the Levant during the Late Middle Ages: The Case of Cyprus.”
11.25—12.00 Discussion
12.00—1.00 Lunch Break
Afternoon Session: Icons and Exchange
1.00—1.50 Annemarie Weyl Carr (Southern Methodist University), “Orthodox Monasteries and the Issues and Images of Cultural Interchange in early Lusignan Cyprus.”
1.50—2.40 Lucy-Anne Hunt (University of Manchester), "Eastern Christian Art and Culture in the late Twelfth to mid Thirteenth Centuries: Cultural Convergence between Jerusalem, Greater Syria and Egypt."
2.40—3.15 Discussion
3.15—3.30 Coffee Break
3.30—4.45 Response and Discussion: Robert Ousterhout (University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana)